Ice Bolt

Creates a magical bolt of ice that damages and slows your enemies.

Ice Bolt is the Sorceress's first Cold skill (level 1, no prerequisite) and the prerequisite of Ice Blast. It is a single bolt that hits one target, damages it and chills it. Its own damage is small, 38–49 at level 20, but two other numbers make the skill: the flat 3 mana, which never changes, and the five synergies that each add +15% a hard point, the largest synergy rate in the tree.

The numbers

The damage comes from EMin 6 and EMax 10 with HitShift 7, which halves them: 3–5 at level 1. The minimum then grows +1 a level to level 8, +2 to 16, +3 to 22, +4 to 28 and +5 a level past that; the maximum grows +1.5, +2.5, +3.5, +4.5 and +5.5 over the same brackets. That is 14–20 at level 10, 38–49 at level 20 and 78–94 at level 30. The line reads lvl, so +skills count.

The cold length is ELen 150 frames plus 35 a level (ELevLen1–3 are all 35), at 25 frames a second: 6 seconds at level 1 and 1.4 seconds more a level, 18.6 at level 10, 32.6 at level 20, 46.6 at level 30. It also reads lvl.

Mana is 3 at every level (mana 3, lvlmana 0, manashift 8) and is left out of the table.

How it works

Ice Bolt fires one "icebolt" missile; the Basin's page classes it as a medium-range single-target missile, almost long range but unable to reach the top corners of the screen. It hits the first target in its path and stops. It is cold damage, reduced by the target's cold resistance, see Dealing Elemental Damage and Resistances and Immunities; as a spell it needs no attack rating, and it is cast at casting speed.

The hit chills: the target is slowed for the cold length above, by the monster's own cold-effect figure, and the length is divided in Nightmare and Hell, see Chill and Freeze. The Basin's page says Ice Bolt has the same velocity and range as Ice Blast and the same size as Ice Blast and Glacial Spike, but applies less damage to one target; its two advantages are the fixed low mana and a longer cold length against units that cannot be frozen, where a freeze would fall back to a chill anyway.

The chill does nothing to a monster whose cold-effect figure is 0 in that difficulty, and the 32.6-second chill is divided by the difficulty's cold divisor in Nightmare and Hell, see Chill and Freeze.

Synergies and +skills

• Frost Nova, Ice Blast, Glacial Spike, Blizzard and Frozen Orb: +15% cold damage per level each (skills.txt Param8 = 15; the calc reads each skill's blvl, hard points only).
• Ice Bolt in turn feeds Ice Blast (+8% a hard point), Glacial Spike (+5%), Blizzard (+5%) and Frozen Orb (+2%).
• +skills raise the damage and the cold length (lvl); none of the percentages move with +skills.
• Cold Mastery lowers the target's cold resistance and so raises what lands.

Against players

A player's hit on another player is cut to 17% of its value (difficultylevels.txt PlayerDamagePercentVSPlayer) before anything else, see Player versus Player. The Basin's page gives no other rule for Ice Bolt against players.

Build notes

• One hard point in Ice Bolt is +8% to Ice Blast, +5% to Glacial Spike and Blizzard and +2% to Frozen Orb at once; the points are usually spent for those, not for the bolt.
• The reverse holds too: a Sorceress with 20 points in each of the five synergies has a 3-mana bolt at +1,500%, 16 times its base.
• The cold length, 32.6 seconds at level 20, is the longest chill in the tree; it is a slow, not a freeze.